We podcast for freedom wherever there's trouble in Episode 176

A few weeks ago, I put in a guest appearance on Bob and Henry's podcast What a Cartoon! to talk about an episode of the ’80s G.I. Joe cartoon called "There's No Place Like Springfield." If the franchise background material I presented in that episode seemed unnecessarily detailed, well, that's because I had already pooled a lot of it together in preparation for a Retronauts episode about G.I. Joe, which you can listen to right here. And it's probably just as well I got a lot of this out on What a Cartoon!, or else this episode would have been like three hours long.

Benj and Chris join me this weekend to revel in the whole "being old people who remember the ’80s and actually finding something romantic and fun about war." Ah, naivety. As we explain here, though, much of the credit for G.I. Joe's unexpected excellence is due to one man: Larry Hama, who midwifed the franchise from failed ’70s toyline to chart-topping ’80s monster.

Of course, we also talk about the games of G.I. Joe! And even Action Force. There aren't a ton of them, and they're pretty lightweight... but some of them are still pretty fun. What I wouldn't do to get that Konami arcade game ported to Switch or PS4...

Episode description: America's daring, highly trained special podcasting force of Jeremy Parish, Benj Edwards, and Chris Sims take on G.I. Joe, the ruthless comics/toy/games franchise that ruled the world during the ’80s.

Also, the very first Retronauts live stream I ever hosted tackled G.I. Joe for NES, if you want to see it in action. Jump ahead to about the 4-minute mark to skip the initial setup nonsense...